1. Technical Field
The present invention relates generally to computing systems; and, more particularly, it relates to protection of operating systems and application data within computing systems.
2. Related Art
Conventional programs and methods that seek to provide for disk protection and recovery of a computing system are intrinsically available to a user of the computing system. Such conventional programs and methods are installed by a user of the computing system and are easily available to the user. Sometimes, the user performs some modification of the actual conventional program or method that itself seeks to prevent catastrophic operating system failure of the computing system and to recover the operating system of the computing system after some hard disk crash. Examples of some instances where a user performs some undesirable modification of the operating system of the computing system that disables the computing system and prevents its operation.
Moreover, when the program or method that is used to prevent this collapse of the operating system of the computing system is easily visible or accessible to the user of the computing system, that program or method can itself be undesirably corrupted by the user. For example, when a user desires to xe2x80x9cclean upxe2x80x9d certain portions of the hard disk of the computing system, the user oftentimes goes through and deletes certain files within the hard disk without a great deal of caution or care. Such an instance would be a user-generated corruption to the operating system of the computing system. The inherent installation of conventional programs and methods that seek to provide for disk protection and recovery, in that they are easily available or accessible to the user of the computing system, may themselves be corrupted by the very user of the computing system whose computing system is meant to be xe2x80x9cprotected.xe2x80x9d
Further limitations and disadvantages of conventional and traditional systems will become apparent to one of skill in the art through comparison of such systems with the present invention as set forth in the remainder of the present application with reference to the drawings.
Various aspects of the present invention can be found in an operating system and data protection system that is operable within a computing system. The operating system and data protection system contains, among other things, a computing system having a hard disk and an operating system. The operating system executes a number of disk access commands that are directed to the hard disk. In addition, the system and data protection system contains a virtual device driver that intercepts a disk access command that is directed to the hard disk. In accordance with the present invention, the virtual device driver (VXD) is substantially transparent to the operating system of the computing system. The virtual device driver (VXD) is incapable of being found using conventional search techniques. That is to say, the virtual device driver (VXD) is virtually hidden from any user of the computing system and is incapable of being altered by a user of the computing system.
In certain embodiments of the invention, the virtual device driver (VXD) of the operating system and data protection system employs a virtual file allocation table to re-direct the disk access command that is directed to the hard disk. In order to do so, the virtual device driver (VXD) is operable to perform dynamic floating point address calculation. The hard disk of the computing system is partitioned into a busy area of the hard disk and a free area of the hard disk, the busy area contains a base system setting of the computing system, From certain perspectives, the virtual device driver (VXD) of the invention safeguards a base system setting of the computing system from one of deletion, alteration, and corruption. This enables a user of the computing system to recover a previous base system setting of the computing system after some undesirable event has disabled the operation of the computing system. The virtual device driver (VXD) warns a user of the computing system of any BIOS changes to the base system setting of the computing system. The present invention is operable within any number of industry available operating systems including, but not limited to the Microsoft Windows 95 operating system and the Microsoft Windows 98 operating system.
Various aspects of the present invention can be found in a method that protects an operating system and data within a computing system. The method includes executing a disk access command to a busy area of a hard disk. Subsequently, the disk access command is intercepted and filtered. The intercepting and filtering of the disk access command is performed using a virtual device driver (VXD) in certain embodiments of the invention. The disk access command is re-directed to a free area of the hard disk when the disk access command is a write disk access command. If the disk access command is a read disk access command, then it is permitted to be directed to a busy area of the hard disk. The method employs floating point address calculation to perform the re-direction of the disk access command. When the method is performed within a computing system having an operating system, a virtual device driver within the computing system is substantially transparent to the operating system of the computing system. In certain embodiments of the invention, the method warns a user of a computing system on which the method is performed of any BIOS changes to a base system setting of the computing system. Similar to other embodiments of the invention as described above, the method is operable within any number of industry available operating systems including, but not limited to the Microsoft Windows 95 operating system and the Microsoft Windows 98.operating system.
Other aspects, advantages and novel features of the present invention will become apparent from the following detailed description of the invention when considered in conjunction with the accompanying drawings.